Efforts to boost the US’s production of semiconductor chips are likely to continue regardless of who wins the presidential election.
iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, a roundup of some of our top stories. Bummed about your Spotify Wrapped? Maybe this explanation from a former Spotify engineer about what was different this year will help.
On the agenda today:
How Luigi Mangione went from a privileged upbringing to a suspect in a high-profile murder case.Paul Singer’s son is more powerful than ever at his father’s $70 billion firm.CEOs of young American startups are seeing their salaries drop.The hottest thing in tech is talking up the power of your supercomputer.
But first: Keeping track of DOGE.
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DOGE today, gone tomorrow
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are promising to make sweeping changes through the Department of Government Efficiency.
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images; iStock; Natalie Ammari/BI
With a little more than a month until Inauguration Day, one of the most fascinating parts of the new administration isn’t being led by President-elect Donald Trump.
The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has arguably garnered more attention than Trump’s plans for tax cuts, tariffs, and immigration.
Co-heads Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have targeted $2 trillion in budget cuts by July 4, 2026, but concrete details on how it plans to get there remain a bit of a mystery.
To get a better sense of what DOGE might ultimately do, we mapped out all the areas Musk and Ramaswamy have hinted at making cuts. What is clear is there’s no shortage of ideas on where the government is wasting money, according to the duo.
However, tweeting that you’ll “delete” an entire agency is one thing. Executing that plan is another thing entirely.
That’s not to say there’s no value in the endeavor. A Pimco economist highlighted DOGE as one of the key ways Trump can reduce the risk from America’s soaring debt.
This gets to a wider point: DOGE’s goal of cutting government spending comes at a crucial time for the global economy.
Government debt across the globe has spiraled out of control and the current trajectory represents “the most serious threat to macroeconomic and financial stability,” according to a senior economist at the Bank for International Settlements.
Inside the life of Luigi Mangione
Photo by Altoona Police Department via Getty Images; BI
Before he became a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione came from a prominent Baltimore family and received an education at elite schools. Friends described him as whip-smart, kind, and unassuming. A former classmate told BI, “I would set my sister or friend up with him.”
For years, however, Mangione suffered from debilitating back pain, which he detailed in dozens of Reddit posts, that “put my life on hold in my 20s.” The experience appears to represent a significant — and excruciating — engagement with the American healthcare system.
From Ivy League to a murder charge.
Also read:
In the age of social media, the myth of Luigi Mangione preceded the man
The rise of the son
Jonathan Moscrop/Getty Images; iStock; Rebecca Zisser/BI
Gordon Singer, the son of Elliott Management founder Paul Singer and the head of its London office, is now the only one of the firm’s 14 partners based abroad. He has less autonomy over the office and fewer big-hitting portfolio managers reporting to him.
Yet within the firm, the younger Singer has more power than ever. Thanks to a recent reorg, his voice is now one of the most influential inside it.
Early-stage startup CEOs take a pay cut
iStock
A recent study from Kruze Consulting found the average salary for the CEO of a seed-stage startup in the US is $132,000 a year — which is down from $142,000 in last year’s study. The average founder is also likely to be making less than other people on the leadership team.
The consultancy, which analyzed 450 VC-backed startups’ payroll records, also says employee compensation accounts for around 75% of the total operating costs for its startup clients.
A breakdown of how much startups are paying talent.
Also read:
Public salary data reveals how much xAI pays some workers compared to OpenAI
Who really has the fastest supercomputer?
TRITON Supercomputer at the University of Miami
T.J. Lievonen
Both Oracle and xAI love to flex the size of their GPU clusters. Back in the day, it used to be a lot simpler to figure this out. But it’s getting harder to tell who is actually right, no matter how much CEOs love to brag.
Plus, size isn’t the only important factor. Power efficiency is a vital indicator in AI computing since energy is an enormous operational expense in AI.
But that gets lost in the measuring contest.
This week’s quote:
“In case it was unclear before, it is clear now: GM are a bunch of dummies.”
— Cruise founder Kyle Vogt on X following GM’s announcement that it would stop funding Cruise and fold it into the company’s other driver-assistance efforts.
More of this week’s top reads:
The biggest supermarket merger in US history is dead.Why your local Chipotles and Sweetgreens may not be around for long.Some workers are warming up to AI and think it will help their career.America is doing retirement all wrong.Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are trying to liberate us from slide decks. Good luck with that.BuzzFeed survives by selling ‘Hot Ones’ to George Soros.Meet America’s real Golden Girls: Some unmarried older women without kids at home are doing great.
An entire team of lawyers jumped ship to a major US law firm.
The Insider Today team: Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in Chicago. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York.
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